Working Hard for a Living

On the second day back to work, Oliver continues to love the cozy. My fleece pajamas and fuzzy robe are his favorite. And if he can find a cozy spot on my lap? All the better.

He just wishes I’d stop clicking right by his ear.

***
I did have to get up and get dressed because I’m kitteh sitting for a friend this week.

I came home and sat down briefly to send an email.

Obi was there in second to make sure I didn’t move again. We’ll have none of that leaving stuff when there’s snuggling to do.

***

I was allowed off the couch, briefly, when The Boy came home. I used the opportunity to restart our Roku to see if the TV quality would improve. The opening sequence is the letters r-o-k-u falling onto the screen.

Obi’s eyes got wide. Do it again.

It reminded me that there is a channel for cats on Roku. We looked and found a free channel that looks really lame. The one we wanted is a dollar a month. That’s too much.

Obi knew there was a limit to my love.

***

Then we watched a show he heard me call Downton Tabby. He watched the whole time and never saw a cat. In fact, those people have a dog!

Obi’s life is full of disappointment.

***

I talked about blocking my squares of yarn the other day. The instructions told me to use a block of foam covered in batting but I just used some pieces of foam core that The Boy saved from recycling at work. A friend asked me if it seemed to be working and I mentioned the batting might have been important because the blocks weren’t drying as quickly as I expected.

You know what helps yarn dry more quickly?

Your grey kitten not peeing on them, that’s what.

So now I need directions for washing my squares.

***

WordPress says this is my forth bloggiversary. Thanks to those of you who have been here all along and welcome to our new friends!

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Purr Therapy

I have a good life. I do. I’ve got the love of a good man, a roof over my head, a back-up roof (now under contract, woo hoo!), and a job that – if nothing else – pays for me to have both those roofs.

But sometimes the little things in life pile up. Sometimes a girl just has to cry to let the weight go.

Like today at lunch time.

"Is it over?"

Poor Obi was just getting his belly rubbed when all of a sudden the tears started coming. Of course he was concerned, but purr therapy is in the job description of the Chief Executive Kitten. Obi purred at me. He hug-butted me. He went to the end of the couch and looked desperately for Oliver. Then he came back to me.

Eventually, Oliver showed up to take over. Oliver is probably the best purr therapist I have ever had. He is very calm and just lays beside me and purrs. Once in a while he’ll pat my face or kiss my chin. And the hugs come steadily. It really works quite well.

And, of course, since he is a professional there is always follow up care. Every time I’ve been sitting down this evening he has been in my lap. An extra purr to support the initial therapy.

The things that were wrong this morning are still wrong this evening. But I feel better now.

Oliver is taking a long nap before bedtime – purr therapy is hard work.

It’s Thunder Thursday! This week’s guest fuzzy is Dot. Dot is the head salespuppy at Deselms Fine Art here in Cheyenne. She belongs to my friend Harvey. The art – including mine if I can get my backside into the workshop – and Dot make a visit to the gallery worthwhile whenever you are in Cheyenne.

"Just how 'still' do I have to be for this painting?"

Hello, my name is The Girl…

…and I am a nip enabler. Both of my furry sons are nipheads.

That’s right. They are on The Nip.

And I get it for them.

Why? Because it is HIGH-larious.

In this video, an movie of epic length at four minutes 44 seconds, you’ll see it all. It is a classic tale of two brothers, torn apart by drugs and then brought back together when they lose it all. You decide if The Boy is a hero or a villain in his role.

You also get to hear my giggle my weird giggle because Kitten Thunder is fun to watch on The Nip. Obi gets silly. Er. And Oli become seriously lovey. Which is why a grey tail keeps passing by the camera. Oh, and all bad camera work can be attributed to a grey kitten hugging the videographer.

Enjoy this piece we call…NipHeads.

Forts and trees and a Mean Kitty

So, how did everyone enjoy their forts this weekend? Holly, of The Aluminum Foiled My Plans fame, pointed out a video from The Mean Kitty to me this week. I’ve been a big fan of The Mean Kitty for a long time but had stopped following Mr. Safety‘s work after he got married and stopped doing it for a while. Turns out, though, he’s been doing a lot of work I’ve missed. Including, wouldn’t you know it…a fort. This week.

To this I say…maybe our breakfast nook needs boxes again. Oh, and petcentric.com? Sponsor us! We have hundred of fans! And that’s no typo.

The Boy and I figured out what Oliver is allergic to this week. I was thinking it was weird that he’s turning eight years old this month and this is the first time he has had any issues at all. We were bending our brains trying to figure out what is different in this house. And then it hit us. Cottonwoods.

If you are unfamiliar with the Cottonwood Tree, they are a big deciduous tree that sends out seeds this time of year. In the form of a cotton that floats down from the tree and drifts and gathers. It’s like snow in the summer.

When Cheyenne was founded the whole town had 12 trees. The ladies who came with their rancher husbands were not pleased. So they did something about it. They went around the region and found trees that grew well in the area – including Cottonwoods from Nebraska – and they planted them here. Then they took care of them. The women would send their husbands back to work after lunch with the pail of washwater they’d used that morning and the men would water the trees along the way. Then the kids would bring back the empty pail on the way home from school. Now, Cheyenne is a Tree City USA.

Now, Cheyenne gets drifts of “cotton” in July.

But not in my old neighborhood – I had spruce trees. Even though this house and my house are the same age, this house was built in a historic district where the tradition of Cottonwoods has been going since the 1800’s. My house was built in a new neighborhood in 1940, and by then there were so many more options for trees that no one wanted the same ol’ Cottonwoods.

So the mystery is solved.

Oliver is doing better. His eyes are watery and he has sneezing fits and he looks as miserable as all my human friends who have allergies. But he doesn’t sound like he’s on the brink of death. I’ll take that.

We provide our own siren.

Just like parents, it is hard for a cat’s people to hear him/her in pain or discomfort. Poco had asthma for over 20 years, but every attack made me stop and listen. I hoped it would be short. I hoped it would pass without too much pain. I hoped it would be only one attack.

Oliver has inverted sneeze, which sounds even worse than asthma when an attack comes. And since he can go months between them you can tell that Oliver is unsure what is happening. They are horrible. But they pass quickly.

Usually, they pass quickly.

"This is the face of discomfort."

On Sunday, Oliver had an inverted sneeze. It didn’t last long. A while later he was in the condo and I went to take his picture. I noticed he was a little wheezy. Then, later that night, he started to cough.

The coughing came in spurts – one cough every 40 seconds or so for several minutes. Then he’s put his head back down and nap. By bedtime he was still coughing but between he was having trouble swallowing. Neither of us slept well.

I did the math and realized it’s been several months since we’ve been to the vet.

So we were due.

Oliver wanted to eat on Monday morning. This is a good sign. When he doesn’t want to eat we throw him in the carrier and call the vet on the way there. The grey kitten loves his food. Unfortunately, his throat hurt so bad that when I went back to the kitchen to check on him he was just licking the gravy off the food.

I dialed the phone. The vet had an appointment at 2:30 p.m., which I took and I thought in relief about how much cheaper that was going to be that squeezing him in on a “same day” visit.

I hung up.

I saw Oli gag.

I called back and told them we were on our way in. Oliver wasn’t so sick that he couldn’t scream his fool head off the entire way there.

They have another new doctor – he’s tall and seems to “get” cats. Oliver would have liked him had the new doctor not been trying to pry open his mouth to examine his throat. Next time, maybe.

And the verdict? Allergies.

Good grief, kid.

He’s on his way back to fine. Prednisone, our drug of choice, for the allergies. An antibiotic just in case because he had a mild fever.

"Beware the dragon, for you are tasty and about to disturb the kitten's nap."

Why this picture? Because no blog is complete without Obi, right?

All these channels and nothing is on…

I have no pictures to go with this blog so you get my favorite LOLs from an email I received this morning.

Just like on people TV, sometimes there is nothing on OutTV in spite of the many channels. Also like people TV, when there is something on one channel there is usually something equally good on another channel.

This morning, Oli and Obi were looking out the front window in the living room. They looked for a long time. There were no bird calls. No squirrel ack-ack-acking. So when I saw a squirrel on the porch I ran in and grabbed Obi to show him.

Forty-two bunny kicks and some serious chewing later, I let him go and he ran back to the living room window. Curious, I looked closer. There in the bushes we had a giant flock of wrens. But you can barely see them unless you focus on one spot for several seconds. It is a very existential program…they move under the branches therefore they are. Not the kind of programming, obviously, where you ack-ack-ack along.

This - plus fox, coyotes and cars - is why Kitten Thunder has an indoor only policy.

Mad Jedi Skills and the Banana Chair

As I said in my last post, the grandpeople came for a visit this weekend to see my nephew play in the state hockey tournament (congrats on your 4th place win, River Rats!). They brought the banana chair that my brother and I used to sit in to play video games with them. As soon as it was set down in the living room it was good fun for the cats and great for cat watching.

First of all, this chair smells like several cats Kitten Thunder has never met: Gracie, Stoney, Spade and possibly even Stasha. It’s also possible that it smells like Poco from way back when – it was one of her favorite places to sleep when we lived at the grandpeople’s house. It is FULL of interesting smell.

And…it rocks. Oliver spent most of the time he was smelling the chair putting his front paw on it. Then it would rock forward and smack him in the face. Then he’d take his paw off and it would rock back and hit the wall. Rinse and repeat this scenario a thousand more times. Then Obi took his turn.

Obi Wan Kittenobi did the face smacking wall smacking face smacking wall smacking routine for a couple minutes. Then he got on the chair and put his weight on the back of the chair, riding it as it swung back to hit the wall. Then he’d sit back and ride it as it rocked forward.

Then, in an unexpected move of Jedi might, Obi put the chair in its place. He strolled, very casually, about four feet from the chair. Then he twisted back, flew into the air, and landed a flying drop kick right to the center of the chair back. As the chair impacted the wall, Obi propelled himself from the chair and landed – in a surprisingly graceful way – in the same spot from which he’d taken off.

That’ll show that chair.

Ten minutes later he was laying in the chair taking a nap. Really, you just have to show the furniture who is boss. I’d show you a picture of the cute kitten sleeping in the cozy chair, but Obi Wan also used The Force to feel the camera coming and got up. Jedi jerk.

To entice him back – we have a blog to put out here, you know – I turned the banana chair into a chair cave. And we all know how hard it is for a Jedi to resist going into the cave. He can really get that chair a-rocking when it is also a cave.

"Come to the dark side, we have tuna."

Oliver will come around to the banana chair. At the moment he’s using it to guard his hiding spot behind the recliner. While his brother is distracted by the rocking brought on by a move to the left, Oli is escaping to the right.

Besides, Oli already stole the most comfortable napping spot in the house from Obi.

"Who needs The Force when you have a fuzzy blanket?"